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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium[1] to a surface (support base). In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete. Paintings may be decorated with gold leaf, and some modern paintings incorporate other materials including sand, clay, and scraps of paper.

Overview

"The boundary of things in the second plane will not be discerned like those in the first. Therefore, painter, do not produce boundaries between the first and the second, because the boundary of one object and another is of the nature of a mathematical line but not an actual line, in that the boundary of one colour is the start of another colour and is not to be accorded the status of an actual line, because nothing intervenes between the boundary of one colour which is placed against another. Therefore, painter, do not make the boundaries pronounced at a distance."[2]

What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity. Every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity; by using just color (of the same intensity) one can only represent symbolic shapes. Thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization (perspective), and symbols. For example, a painter perceives that a particular white wall has different intensity at each point, due to shades and reflections from nearby objects, but ideally, a white wall is still a white wall in pitch darkness. In technical drawing, thickness of line is also ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters.

Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are of music. Color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, white is. Some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover the use of language is only a generalisation for a color equivalent. The word "red", for example, can cover a wide range of variations on the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a formalized register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music, such as C or C♯ in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic and derived (complementary or mixed) colors (like, red, blue, green, brown, etc.). Painters deal practically with pigments, so "blue" for a painter can be any of the blues: phtalocyan, Paris blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological, symbolical meanings of color are not strictly speaking means of painting. Colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music (like "C") is analogous to light in painting, "shades" to dynamics, and coloration is to painting as specific timbre of musical instruments to music—though these do not necessarily form a melody, but can add different contexts to it.

Rhythm is important in painting as well as in music. Rhythm is basically a pause incorporated into a body (sequence). These pauses allow creative force to intervene and add new creations—form, melody, coloration. The distribution of form, or any kind of information is of crucial importance in the given work of art and it directly affects the esthetical value of that work. This is because the esthetical value is functionality dependent, i.e. the freedom (of movement) of perception is perceived as beauty. Free flow of energy, in art as well as in other forms of "techne", directly contributes to the esthetical value.

Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, for example, collage, which began with Cubism and is not painting in the strict sense. Some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer. (There is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required.)

In 1829, the first photograph was produced. From the mid to late 19th century, photographic processes improved and, as it became more widespread, painting lost much of its historic purpose to provide an accurate record of the observable world. There began a series of art movements into the 20th century where the Renaissance view of the world was steadily eroded, through Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism and Dadaism. Eastern and African painting, however, continued a long history of stylization and did not undergo an equivalent transformation at the same time.

Modern and Contemporary Art has moved away from the historic value of craft and documentation in favour of concept; this led some to say in the 1960s that painting, as a serious art form, is dead. This has not deterred the majority of living painters from continuing to practice painting either as whole or part of their work. The vitality and versatility of painting in the 21st century belies the premature declarations of its demise. In an epoch characterized by the idea of pluralism, there is no consensus as to a representative style of the age. Important works of art continue to be made in a wide variety of styles and aesthetic temperaments, the marketplace being left to judge merit.

History of painting

The oldest known paintings are at the Grotte Chauvet in France, claimed by some historians to be about 32,000 years old. They are engraved and painted using red ochre and black pigment and show horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, mammoth or humans often hunting. However the earliest evidence of painting has been discovered in two rock-shelters in Arnhem Land, in northern Australia. In the lowest layer of material at these sites there are used pieces of ochre estimated to be 60,000 years old. Archaeologists have also found a fragment of rock painting preserved in a limestone rock-shelter in the Kimberley region of North-Western Australia, that is dated 40 000 years old. [1]There are examples of cave paintings all over the world—in France, Spain, Portugal, China, Australia, India etc.

In Western cultures oil painting and watercolor painting are the best known media, with rich and complex traditions in style and subject matter. In the East, ink and color ink historically predominated the choice of media with equally rich and complex traditions.

Aesthetics and theory of painting

Aesthetics is the study of art and beauty; it was an important issue for such 18th and 19th century philosophers as Kant or Hegel. Classical philosophers like Plato and Aristotle also theorized about art and painting in particular; Plato disregarded painters (as well as sculptors) in his philosophical system; he maintained that painting cannot depict the truth—it is a copy of reality (a shadow of the world of ideas) and is nothing but a craft, similar to shoemaking or iron casting. By the time of Leonardo painting had become a closer representation of the truth than painting was in Ancient Greece. Leonardo da Vinci, on the contrary, said that "Pittura est cousa mentale" (painting is a thing of the mind). Kant distinguished between Beauty and the Sublime, in terms that clearly gave priority to the former. Although he did not refer particularly to painting, this concept was taken up by painters such as Turner and Caspar David Friedrich.

Hegel recognized the failure of attaining a universal concept of beauty and in his aesthetic essay wrote that Painting is one of the three "romantic" arts, along with Poetry and Music for its symbolic, highly intellectual purpose.[3][4] Painters who have written theoretical works on painting include Kandinsky and Paul Klee.[5][6] Kandinsky in his essay maintains that painting has a spiritual value, and he attaches primary colors to essential feelings or concepts, something that Goethe and other writers had already tried to do.

Iconography is the study of the content of paintings, rather than their style. Erwin Panofsky and other art historians first seek to understand the things depicted, then their meaning for the viewer at the time, and then analyse their wider cultural, religious, and social meaning.

In 1890, the Parisian painter Maurice Denis famously asserted: "Remember that a painting – before being a warhorse, a naked woman or some story or other – is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order."[7] Thus, many twentieth century developments in painting, such as Cubism, were reflections on the means of painting rather than on the external world, nature, which had previously been its core subject. Recent contributions to thinking about painting has been offered by the painter and writer Julian Bell. In his book What is Painting?, Bell discusses the development, through history, of the notion that paintings can express feelings and ideas.[8] In Mirror of The World Bell writes:

‘A work of art seeks to hold your attention and keep it fixed: a history of art urges it onwards, bulldozing a highway through the homes of the imagination.’[9]

Painting media

Different types of paint are usually identified by the medium that the pigment is suspended or embedded in, which determines the general working characteristics of the paint, such as viscosity, miscibility, solubility, drying time, etc.

Painting styles

'Style' is used in two senses: It can refer to the distinctive visual elements, techniques and methods that typify an individual artist's work. It can also refer to the movement or school that an artist is associated with. This can stem from an actual group that the artist was consciously involved with or it can be a category in which art historians have placed the painter. The word 'style' in the latter sense has fallen out of favor in academic discussions about contemporary painting, though it continues to be used in popular contexts. Such movements or classifications include the following :

References

^ "Painting and music are the specially romantic arts. Lastly, as a union of painting and music comes poetry, where the sensuous element is more than ever subordinate to the spirit." Excerpted from Encyclopedia Britannica 1911

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Painting is the practice of applying color to a surface
(support) such as, e.g. paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer or
concrete. However, when used in an artistic sense, the term
"painting" means the use of this activity in combination with
drawing, composition and other aesthetic considerations in order to
manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the
practitioner.

From LoveToKnow 1911

From BibleWiki

The art least developed among the Hebrews. If it is borne in
mind that painting was affected by the Mosaic interdiction against
images, it is not surprising that this art is hardly mentioned in
the Old
Testament. Decorations on walls include only carvings in
relief, as in the Temple, and
drawings traced by means of a sharp point, the outlines of which
were colored (comp. Ezek8:10, xxiii. 14). The
decorations on earthenware also were only colored outline-drawings.
See Art.

Painting is using colours to make art. It is also the word for a painted work of art. Many kinds of paints are used to create art. They include watercolors, acrylics and oils. Other artists like working with pencil or chalk.

Famous paintings are often kept in art galleries, like the National Gallery in London and the Louvre (Paris) where one of the most famous paintings in the world hangs, The Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo DaVinci. People do not have to go to a famous gallery to view art. There are private art galleries in many cities around the world.

There is a basic difference between drawing and painting. In drawing, single layer constitutes entire image. In painting a layer over other is painted to get the final image. As a result, most of the times the image will not be clear until it gets to final stage.

There are 3 basic stages in painting.

. Divide
. Layer
. Touchup

In divide stage, the canvas is divided into a few major areas (depending on the image you paint) and background for those areas are plotted.

In layer stage, a layer over other layer is plotted to get the desired shape in each area. By end of this stage, all objects in the image will be clearly identifible.

The touchup stage needs extra effort. This stage is to provide extra look to the image like precise bordering, merging layers and other visual effects.